Told you so

I complained a lot about the 2011 Brisbane flood investigation that gave many people the impression that the flood was solely caused by improper operation of Wivenhoe Dam.   Having personally driven around the dam a couple of days before the flood, in remarkable rain, I never believed it.    (We tried to have a day out, and drove up to Mount Glorious for lunch.  The rain started again on the return trip, and it was intense and long lasting.)  What I thought could come out is that lots of houses which were flooded to a certain height may have had the height reduced, but still have been extensively flooded regardless of how the difficult decisions the dam operators were making were made.  Why should those people get any compensation at all?

And it turns out that this is exactly what has happened.   People who thought they were going to get money are getting none, or trivial amounts, and they are  not happy that Maurice Blackburn either  didn't explain (or explain clearly enough is probably more likely?) that winning the case may not mean that everyone who was affected and joined the action would get money.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn said the payouts were determined by the flood adjustment factor, which is essentially how badly a property would have been affected if the dams had been handled properly.

"The case was run on the basis that there would have been some flooding in Brisbane, no matter what, even if the dams had been operated properly," principal lawyer Rebecca Gilsenan said.

"The difference, or the degree of difference, literally differs for every single property.

"About half of the claims in the case wouldn't have flooded at all on the model that the court ultimately upheld.

"People are finding out now and in some really unfortunate cases, they're finding out that the flooding would not have been a whole lot different.

Ms Gilsenan said they were not able to tell individual people what would have happened to their property along the way.

"Because we didn't have a model yet that had been upheld by the court," she said.

"People were told in theory that this would be an issue and damages would need to be adjusted but people didn't know individually what would happen to them."

One high profile guy sums it up like this:

He had to split his interim payment with his ex-wife and received $797.67, despite his Goodna home sustaining $556,000 worth of damage.

"The less you got damaged, the more you're going to get," he said.

"I mean it's laughable.

"We were not told that we may get nothing, even if we won the case.

"[Maurice Blackburn] advertises 'We fight for fair'. Is this fair?"

Well, it is, actually. If your house had 3 m of water through it, and different dam operation could have lowered it to 2 m, you don't deserve compensation.